The Potential for a Blood Test for Scabies

Abstract

Background: Scabies afflicts millions of people worldwide, but it is very difficult to diagnose by the usual skin scrape test, and a presumptive diagnosis is often made based on clinical signs such as rash and intense itch. A sensitive and specific blood test to detect scabies would allow a physician to quickly make a correct diagnosis.

Objective: Our objective was to profile the mite-specific antibodies present in the sera of patients with ordinary scabies.

Methods: Sera of 91 patients were screened for Ig, IgD, IgE, IgG and IgM antibodies to S. scabiei, as well as to the house dust mites Dermatophagoides farinae, D. pteronyssinus and Euroglyphus maynei.

Results: 45%, 27% and 2.2% of the patients had measurable amounts of mixed Ig, IgG and IgE that recognized scabies mite antigens. However, 73.6% of the scabies patients had serum IgM that recognized scabies proteins, and all except two of them also had IgM that recognized all of the three species of dust mites. No patient had serum antibody exclusively reactive to scabies mite antigens.

Conclusions: Co-sensitization or cross-reactivity between antigens from scabies and house dust mites confounds developing a blood test for scabies.

Fig 1. Mixed Ig, IgG and IgM serum antibody binding to ELISA plates coated with scabies or house dust mite antigens.

Data are presented as the mean ELISA absorbance ± standard error of the mean for sera collected from ordinary scabies patients in the US (n = 17) and Brazil (n = 74).